


Mon Mothma Does Not Believe in Ghosts

by angel_deux



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, i mean if you don't count the obvious canon loophole of ghosts?, kind of, more like a make-it-feel-better i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:10:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8916742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: She worried about Cassian when he was still alive. She wondered what a man like him would do when the Rebellion was over. What would he have to live for? Apparently she was right to worry. Not even death can keep him away. And the others? Well, in her weaker, more sentimental moments, she likes to think that they stay for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the middle of writing what might be a very long fix-it fic, but that takes time, and I wanted to get some feelings out now, so I wrote this. I know it's not entirely canon for non-force sensitive people to be able to be ghosts, but I'm also pretty sure it's not explicitly non-canon, so I'm going to pretend it's fine. I just want them to be happy.

Mon Mothma does not believe in ghosts, Force or otherwise. But what other explanation is there? A guilty conscience?

If she had argued harder, perhaps, or if she had seen the obvious: that Jyn Erso was going to find a way to Scarif with or without full support. If only they had scrambled the fleet faster, perhaps some of them could have been saved.

Guilt, yes, but Mon Mothma is a practical woman. She believes in the force, inasmuch as one can believe in something they have no true proof of, and she believes in an afterlife, but in the way that most pragmatic people do – with a kind of hope, a kind of wry acknowledgement that it would be nice, after all, if they weren’t just scraping by in this war-torn galaxy for _nothing_. Every soldier under her command who falls, of course it’s easier to say _may the force be with you_ and hope that they’ve found peace somewhere after their difficult, too-short lives.

It’s just…these ghosts don’t follow her. They follow the _Rebellion_. One would think a guilty conscience wouldn’t care where you were. One would think she could scarcely look in a mirror without seeing Captain Andor behind her, but that isn’t what happens. She doesn’t open her eyes in the middle of the night to find Jyn Erso crouched beside her bed with that betrayed expression she wore when the council turned her down. She doesn’t see Bodhi Rook looking mournfully out her windows with his big, sad eyes. She doesn’t hear Chirrut Îmwe’s prayer chant nor the exasperated sigh from his partner Baze Malbus that apparently always followed, according to people who knew them better. When she is away from the Rebellion, she doesn’t see her ghosts anywhere. But once she notices them for the first time, it becomes impossible to get through a mission briefing or a meeting without seeing them there.

On Yavin 4, in the temple, turning her head to follow Dodonna’s point to a chart on the wall, and Cassian Andor is leaning beside it, studying it as intently as she _should_ be.

Walking to the hanger, back to her ship, seeing Bodhi arguing with Jyn over equipment, soundless because they’re so far away, and when she tries to get closer, a soldier steps in her way, and when she passes him, the dead Rogue One squadmates are both gone, vanished, leaving her blinking against the sunlight, resolving to get more sleep.

She’ll hear the chant in echoes as she walks down the halls. Hears the blind guardian’s prayers as she stands over consoles in the tensest moments of missions.

“Always praying,” says a big man with black hair, standing only feet from her, and the blind monk laughs, showing a brilliant smile. 

Always, there’s a moment where she blinks, or someone catches her attention, or passes between her and these so-real apparitions of the dead team that kept this Rebellion alive. Sometimes she wonders what would happen if she tried to touch one.

She worried about Cassian when he was still alive. She wondered what a man like him would do when the Rebellion was over. What would he have to live for?

Apparently she was right to worry. Not even death can keep him away.

And the others?

Well, in her weaker, more sentimental moments, she likes to think that they stay for him.

Every time she catches a glimpse of the perpetually-tense Captain, arms folded across his chest, she knows she won’t have to look far to spot the diminutive Erso woman in orbit around him. Mon Mothma comes to recognize them even as they’re walking away from her, for always Jyn has a bouncier step, freed of the burdens of her difficult experiences, and often her hand will wander to the inside of Cassian’s elbow, tugging on it, urging him to slow down. Her laugh, something Mon Mothma never heard in life, sometimes echoes after them. Cassian will incline his head towards her, smiling, allowing her a small show of some amusement even as he’s urging her onward to check on whatever aspect of the Rebellion he thinks requires his watchful eye.

Bodhi, too, will rush around them, often chattering in an impossibly fast rhythm of words, hands fluttering as he tries to explain something about ships, or something about droids, or something about space travel that always has Cassian saying “enough, enough!” loud enough that Mon Mothma can hear it. But there’s a note of laughter in his voice that she doesn’t think she heard from him in the last ten years of his existence.

Once, she hears Cassian so clearly, chuckling, saying, “Chirrut…that’s not appropriate. She’s our Chancellor.”

“ _Your_ Chancellor. Besides, I’m dead. I don’t care what she is. I can give her bantha horns if I want.”

“I thought death might make you more mature,” Baze’s voice says. Mon Mothma turns, eyes searching, but there’s no one there.

* * *

A thing like this, she finds, you can get used to. On Yavin, on Hoth, in the Rebel fleet, on every ship she sets foot on, she’s sure to see them. Is it a penance? A reminder of her past failures? Or perhaps simply a reminder that war is sacrifice, that until peace is achieved, there will always be people like Cassian Andor with incomplete stories.

It doesn’t matter what they are, she comes to realize. Whatever they are, she’s glad she sees them.

Standing among the Rebels at the medal ceremony for the smuggler and the farm boy who destroyed the Death Star (Jyn with tears streaming down her face, Cassian’s arm across her shoulders, his head bent against hers as he whispers comfort and congratulations in her ear). Poring over readouts on Hoth (Bodhi disagreeing with a map of an Imperial trade route, Jyn pointing out that they may have changed things up in the years since Rogue One met its end). It’s always brief, always out of the corner of her eye. She can never engage with them for more than a moment, and often the moments are windows into _their_ lives (or non-lives) more than they are opportunities for her to do anything.

Cassian tucking a strand of hair behind Jyn’s ear, the two of them leaning up against the wall in Echo Base, heedless of the cold, heedless that they are standing mere inches from an arguing Leia Organa and Han Solo, during one of their _many_ blow-ups.

Baze, Chirrut, and Bodhi in the mess hall on a transport ship, Baze laughing at a joke Chirrut is evidently telling at Bodhi’s expense. Baze leans in to kiss Chirrut, proud, Bodhi stammeringly trying to explain something.

Cassian gazing longingly at a forgotten Imperial Security droid, lying in a pile of scraps in a hanger, waiting for someone to find the time to reprogram it.

Jyn watching Rebel spies come in from the field, an expression on her face that Mon Mothma recognizes all too well: she wishes she was out there. She’s wondering what it would have been like, had she been given the chance to try and make a real difference in the Rebellion.

“Oh, Jyn,” she murmurs on that occasion, and even though it has never happened before, she feels no surprise when the girl turns and looks at her. “You made all the difference in the galaxy.”

And the apparition smiles before vanishing, and Mon Mothma for the first time feels tears prickling behind her eyes at the thought of the doomed team, so long dead.

* * *

She wonders sometimes if they’re ever going to let go. Cassian wasn’t satisfied with the destruction of the first Death Star, so she can’t imagine what will make him feel whole enough to move on. With every victory, she finds herself looking for him, seeking him out, and when she sees him, she feels a real disappointment, tinged with amusement. He was never satisfied in life. Why would he be so in death?

“When will it be enough?” she asks him once. She’s looking down at her console, alone in a crowded room, everyone talking to each other, talking over each other, as they discuss the alarming news that a second Death Star is being built. Not looking at him, but she can see him out of the corner of her eye, looking down at the same thing.

“I don’t know,” she hears him say.

* * *

The day the empire dies is the last time she sees them, and it makes sense. The joy is bursting within her as she only _barely_ refrains from cheering and dancing and embracing with the rest. She’s looking around at the faces surrounding her, taking them all in, and Bodhi is spinning Jyn around, the two of them looking wild and proud and blissfully happy. Chirrut and Baze are taking a quiet moment of reflection and romance, pressed together, the blind man’s head resting back against the bigger man’s chest as Baze whoops loudly, waving the arm that isn’t wrapped around his lover. Cassian is standing ever firm, ever quiet, his arms still folded across his chest, but he’s laughing. The man is _laughing_ , and Mon Mothma is laughing too, and for a long time, they stare at each other across the table.

That’s when she realizes that no one is interrupting this. People pass between them, she blinks and looks away and looks back, and there Cassian Andor still stands, his laughter turning to a soft smile, turning to a fond grin.

Chirrut and Baze go first, together, holding hands as they walk into the lit-up console in the back of the room, disappearing through the bright screen as it plays and replays the schematics, showing the destruction of the superweapon in thick green lines that don’t seem adequate. Bodhi next, checking back over his shoulder to make sure Jyn and Cassian aren’t far behind. Jyn waits, half a step behind Cassian, watching him as he watches Mon Mothma, and finally Jyn reaches out and takes his arm.

He looks down at her, and she’s smiling, tears shimmering on her face.

“They’re gone,” she says, her voice somehow louder than the raucous celebration all around them. “The Empire are gone, Cassian. You won.”

“They did it,” Cassian agrees.

“With a little help from us.”

The reminder of their contribution, years ago now, is pointed, a little amused at how quickly they were forgotten, and Cassian gives it the chuckle it deserves before kissing her.

They look at Mon Mothma together. She’s still watching them, not daring to look away, because she knows this is the last time. Together, they nod, and she returns the gesture. Never once does it feel silly or alarming that this is happening. Never once does she feel anything but glad to witness this.

Finally satisfied that his fight, started at the age of six years old, is finished, Cassian Andor turns and walks into the light, his arm over Jyn Erso’s shoulders. And though they may not know it, the revelers around them send them off into the afterlife with fitting ceremony, cheering the accomplishments of these heroes, reminding them as they go that their sacrifices meant everything.

“May the force be with you,” Mon Mothma whispers. And she watches them until they’ve faded to nothing but stardust.


End file.
